The Counterfeit Viscount Read online

  “Correct, my lad.”

  “Nothing more?” Thom asked.

  “There’ll be more. Like I said. The day may well come that I want a favor from a fellow in a first-rate position. I could need information concerning accounts or comings and goings. I might require an introduction or the copy of a key.” Nimble sounded serious now. “It’s not so little as you might think, lad. A bit of knowledge can be as powerful as blood and conjuring if you know how to use it. And I believe this arrangement would suit us both. Yeah?”

  Thom appeared thoughtful. Perhaps this was the first time he’d considered the information and access his employment in a powerful institution could confer. He nodded.

  Absently Archie wondered how many others had struck this deal with Nimble.

  “Shall we have a shake to bind it, then?” Nimble extended a big hand, and Thom grasped it with his own much more delicate fingers. They shook three times.

  After that, Mrs. Molly and Nimble traded gossip and news, all while she gathered up her shawl and Thom’s cap from the kitchen. As they discussed the latest attempt of the Good Commons Association to repeal the Prodigal Restriction Codes, Archie picked up a deck of Nimble’s playing cards. He shuffled and flipped through them, absently drawing the ace of diamonds over and over. Nimble cleared away the tea and cups and then bid Thom and Mrs. Molly a good day. Archie folded the ace back into the deck of cards and waved the two of them a farewell.

  Nimble locked the door behind them and then went to the window to observe their descent down the wooden stairs.

  Archie wondered how much of Thom’s story had been truth and how much a boy’s imagination. The detail of the infirmary locks and the excuses for them bothered him. That wasn’t something a child thought up. Of course, the entire affair was Nimble’s concern, not his; still, he felt curious.

  “Anyone waiting at the bottom to thump them?” Archie asked.

  “Nah. They’ve just popped in to Britcher’s Ragstand. Probably selling that blue satin livery and picking up something a little more subtle for the boy to walk around in.”

  Archie nodded and drew his ace again.

  Nimble glanced back in time to see him do it and grinned. “You’ve gotten better with the cards than I ever was.”

  “Practice, old boot. It’s just practice,” Archie replied.

  “Doesn’t hurt to have a fortune to practice with, though.” Nimble leaned over the tall back of the chair Mrs. Molly had abandoned and watched Archie cut and shuffle. He wore a flatteringly attentive expression.

  “There’s not much that having a fortune doesn’t make easier,” Archie agreed. “I don’t suppose you’re going to offer me a sip of something a little stronger than tea, are you?”

  “I’m getting to it, my bantling,” Nimble replied, but he didn’t move. “I’ve heard that your uncle lost two more ships at the card tables.”

  Archie grinned. It had taken him years of gambling, bargaining, and bribery, but he now possessed the majority of his uncle’s debts and assets. He would soon be in a position to ruin the man completely.

  “Must be true to put such wicked smile on your lovely face.” Nimble strolled to the little side table where his yellow bottles of blue gin and pine whiskey stood. “A dash of easy drops?”

  Archie shook his head. He’d found it a challenge to wean himself off ophorium after the war. Now he felt wary of the painless languor the drug so easily provided.

  “The arm’s not hurting, then?” Nimble commented as he poured their drinks.

  “Not today. Suppose that means we won’t be seeing rain.”

  “We never do down here.”

  Nimble brought Archie a generous tot of blue gin in a fat little glass. Archie accepted it with a nod of thanks. An excited hum seemed to awaken in his belly, even before he swallowed his first mouthful. Nimble swirled the pine whiskey in his own glass. The waters dribbled into the liquor produced milky streaks that reminded Archie of smoke. Nimble, too, studied his glass. His expression struck Archie as unusually thoughtful. As a rule, Nimble maintained an air of glib, grinning confidence. Even while he slept, his lips often curved in smug satisfaction.

  “You aren’t far from having all you wanted, are you?”

  Nimble caught Archie off guard, lifting his gaze as Archie stared at him. Archie felt an absurd heat rise in his face and covered it by taking a swig of blue gin. The stuff tasted like it could strip stains from sheets. It burned down into his stomach.

  “I mean to say, you’re well in now. Accepted as Archibald by all and sundry, set up with the title and posh tracts of soil. Not even your sly uncle Silas suspects—”

  “Sure.” Archie wasn’t certain why they were discussing this now. It made him uneasy. “And I know that’s all thanks to you, old boot. I’m not trying to back out—”

  “Course not. Your word is good as gold with me. Always has been. But the thing is….” Nimble swirled his glass again, turning the entire drink milky white. “The thing is that we struck our bargain ages back, when we were both still wet. Since then… since then, I’ve started to….” Nimble scowled at his untouched drink like it could be blamed for his difficulty in making his point.

  The tremulous sensation fluttering through the pit of Archie’s belly turned from butterflies to spiders. He drained his glass just to kill the feeling. Whatever it was that Nimble needed to say, Archie felt certain it wasn’t anything he wanted to hear. There was too much seriousness and finality to Nimble’s expression.

  Suddenly Archie wondered if somehow time had run out. Did Nimble need to collect his soul from his body now? Would that leave him an inhuman wreck? Would it simply kill him? Archie gripped his ironwood walking stick but then forced himself to release it. He’d been the one to make the proposal to Nimble. Whatever fate awaited him, it was his own responsibility.

  “Well, here’s the thing.” Nimble dropped down into the seat across from Archie and slouched back so his knees pushed Archie’s tense legs apart. “That Thom boy isn’t the only one willing to pay me to have a go at the Dee Club. All put together, I stand to make quite a haul, but I need an in to the club, don’t I?”

  The question fell so far from what Archie had been contemplating that it took him a moment to absorb Nimble’s words.

  “You need a nobleman to sponsor you?” Archie said.

  “That I do, my bantling. That I do.” Nimble sipped his pine whiskey. “And we both know that there’s only one nobleman I’d be willing to trust with a venture like this, yeah. So, that puts you in a perfect position to secure the properties that you previously sold to me.”

  “I don’t—” Archie just caught himself from speaking ruinous words. “I’ve not yet avenged Archibald. I’m close, but it’s not done yet.”

  “But you will have wrung Silas out to dry in less than three months, won’t you?” Nimble gazed at him with congratulatory knowing. And Archie wondered how many bankers and debt collectors kept him informed. Archie didn’t want to admit as much, but he couldn’t deny it. When his uncle’s end came, it would be splashed across broadsheets and shouted by newsboys on street corners. A tremendous scandal of bankruptcy, debtors’ prison, and with any luck, suicide as well.

  “He can’t last more than two months,” Archie said. “But I still need those two months, Nimble.”

  Nimble nodded. “But after that, you’ll want to be free of… this.” He gave a wave of his hand. “And I… well, I need a way into the Dee Club. You do me that favor and we’re square. That’s fair, ain’t it?”

  Archie nodded, feeling weirdly stunned, almost as dazed as he’d felt the first moment searing hot cannon shrapnel had torn into his chest—so wounded that it seemed beyond comprehending. The pain came later and lasted for years. He was going to want another drink.

  He lifted his gaze to Nimble’s strangely solemn face and realized Nimble was doing him a kindness. Probably at some cost to himself. Souls didn’t come all that easily. He wasn’t hurting Archie purposefully; he just didn’t know.
And if he didn’t know after all these years, then Archie wasn’t about to tell him. He still had that much pride.

  “Shall we go upstairs?” Archie asked.

  Nimble grinned and then tossed back the rest of his whiskey. “One last time, then, my bantling.”

  ***

  Archie followed Nimble up the narrow, worn staircase. The first time they’d done this, Archie had just turned eighteen and had been filled with anxieties of nearly every kind, from the dread of selling his soul and taking on the uncle who’d terrified him as a child, to worrying over the freshness of his breath. At the time, Nimble had seemed so much more experienced. Though now Archie realized they’d both of them been little more than boys.

  Nimble had been all of nineteen and still hadn’t quite mastered the light steps that he now employed to disguise the immense weight of his iron-dense bones and heavy muscles. These days, floorboards didn’t squeal nor did the steps groan like they strained under lead feet. Just looking at him, no one would have guessed that he weighed nearly twenty-one stone and swam about as well as a cannonball. Archie had discovered as much for himself on maneuvers, when he’d nearly drowned hauling Nimble out of the dank waters of a flooded bog.

  Certainly strangers wouldn’t have imagined that such a jaunty, light-fingered fellow could ever have numbered among the half-starved, barefisted Prodigal Chargers, who’d held Sollum Hill for three weeks against cavalry and heavy guns. Nimble wouldn’t have wanted them to know. He liked being thought of as a flashy tough without any particular history beyond the tall tales that sprang up throughout the back streets of Hells Below.

  Nimble seduced every novice in the Sacred Heart Convent and even knocked up the sixty-year-old Mother Superior.

  Knife turned that skinner, Fatty Braggs, into a pig and sold him to his brother, Butcher Braggs, for sausages.

  Nimble the Knife once killed a snitch, dressed in his clothes, and ate his entire body before the Inquisition captains could arrive on the scene to investigate.

  Archie gave a quiet snicker at the thought of that last one.

  Nimble looked back at him with a raised brow.

  “Just having a laugh at myself,” Archie replied.

  “And here I thought you might be having a chuckle at how wasted my fine ass is, dressed in these dull togs.” Nimble took the last three steps up to the narrow landing, then fished his keys from his pocket and opened his bedroom door. Archie’s pulse picked up, and words seemed to evaporate from his mind.

  “The trousers look good, actually,” Archie managed to get out, though it was hardly sparkling repartee.

  Again Nimble looked back at him, this time with a sharp grin. “I thought they did. Glad you noticed.” Then Nimble beckoned him into the warm dark room. A single Argand lamp rested on the nightstand, throwing circles of soft gold light across the room and adding the scent of olive oil to the air. The modest necessities of a washstand, dresser, and rag rug edged the space, while two small framed prints hung on the far wall—reproductions of Sykes’s famous studies of Adonis in Repose. But it was the four-poster bed that took pride of place and truly revealed Nimble’s love of lavish color and too-bold patterns. Even in the faint light, gold threads gleamed along the length of the bolster. Lush green pinstripe pillows spilled across the scarlet artichoke patterns of his throw. A rainbow of poppy designs enveloped the plump curves of his duvet cover. The silk sheets beneath all that would reveal an indigo sky studded with mauve and yellow stars, Archie recalled. Gilded apple blossoms wound up all four of the bedposts, and the dark violet canopy above displayed hundreds of crescent moons.

  Nothing could have been further from the tasteful pearl-gray elegance of Archie’s own home, and yet the sight of this mismatched extravagance flooded him with a feeling of happiness. He didn’t want this to be the last time he ever visited this room or lay spread across that bed.

  Hating the melancholy turn of his own thoughts, Archie turned his attention from the bed to the prints on Nimble’s wall. The studies captured a handsome man, but with such an empty expression and flawless body that he might as well have been a polished stone.

  Nimble strode to his wardrobe and brought out the three big red candles that he always burned for their ceremony—one for each month. They were no longer the tall, grand columns they’d once been, but now looked short and fat, almost enveloped by the streams and beads of their own melted wax. Nimble muttered some low growling incantation over each one and used his hard black fingernail to gouge a symbol into the wax. He set them in a row and looked well pleased with himself.

  Then came his precious blue vial of blessed oil. He added a single drop to the wick of each candle before placing them on the bedside table. Nimble scratched a match to life and then set the candles burning. The familiar scent of camphor wafted up on a ribbon of pale smoke.

  Archie drew in a deep breath. The perfume filled him with a bittersweet anticipation. He couldn’t wait, and yet he knew it would all too soon be over. And the next time he caught the fragrance of camphor, it would only fill him with loss.

  “Come on, Archie. Don’t look like that.” Nimble walked to him. He reached out and put his arm around Archie’s shoulders, offering him the comforting sort of hug that his father had bestowed upon him on the single occasion that he’d nearly acknowledged their relationship. Coming from Nimble it felt too cautious, too apologetic—like they were visiting a grave, not taking to bed. “You know I won’t hurt you none,” Nimble said quietly.

  “Course I do. You’re a sweet bugger, you are. That’s all anyone says of Nimble the Knife—‘sweet as treacle, and he hardly ever tosses a pastor across the room.’” Archie forced a laugh, then shrugged off Nimble’s heavy arm to toss his cap onto the washstand. He hung his oilskin cloak up on one of the three brass hooks that studded Nimble’s bedroom door. Nimble added his own red sack coat to the hook beside the one holding Archie’s cloak.

  “Well, as far as buggery goes, I haven’t had any complaints.” Nimble cast Archie a quick, sly glance as he slipped his galluses off his broad shoulders. His trousers dropped to the floor, leaving him dressed in just the white linen shirt that Archie had brought him six months ago. Nimble’s trimmed black fingernails stood out starkly against the abalone buttons. He stripped his shirt off quickly, but took a few moments to fold everything away, neat as a pin.

  Naked, Nimble was quite a sight. Muscular enough to rival the framed sketches on his walls, but far more affecting than those idealized images. A mole in the shape of a sloppy heart sat a few inches above his left asscheek, and fine indentations marked his waist, where the leather of his knife belt had dug into his skin. He bore far more scars than Archie. Saber scars, bullet scars, knife scars, along with the common history of scraped knuckles and skinned knees that marked most of humanity. Unlike Archie, he wasn’t self-conscious of any of them. In fact he seemed completely at ease standing there naked and already half-hard. Archie admired and envied that self-confidence.

  Then Nimble lifted his gaze to Archie. That jagged, delighted smile lit his face, seeming to wash away the fine lines that edged his eyes, and all at once, Archie forgot the insecurities that made him so awkward. Here with Nimble in this small room, there were no lies to maintain. He felt appreciated as the man he truly was.

  “I can’t believe you still wear these foul old boots. I ask you, is that anyway to dress when you’re coming to such a fine bed as this one? Ugh. The entire kit’s got to go, Archie.” Nimble winked at him, and Archie laughed. Archie’s attachment to his army boots—and his nickname for Nimble—was a long-standing joke between them.

  He swung onto the bed and lay back to stare up at all those moons spilled across purple velvet. Nimble knelt and unlaced Archie’s boots, then pulled them off his feet and set them at the bedside. He stripped away Archie’s clothes with a kind of care that would have done Archie’s valet proud. Though he paused when he got Archie’s shirt off. He frowned at the yellow-blue bruises mottling Archie’s abdomen.

 
; “Got it fencing at Green’s, I think…,” Archie said, but then he remembered. “No. It was at the Prince Joseph Boxing Club. Punch-ups are all the rage just now.”

  Nimble made a disgusted sound and shook his head.

  “Next time, send them rich harecops down here to Hells Below. Plenty of us would gladly give’m thrashings for half the cost of the membership to their clubs.”

  “You are generous to a fault, old boot,” Archie replied.

  Nimble continued to frown at the large bruise. He looked like he wanted to say something more about the scrapes and bruises Archie had acquired while keeping company with the kind of spoiled men who made hobbies of violence. But Nimble only shook his head, then folded Archie’s shirt and set it aside.

  He leaned over Archie, both of them naked, exposed in their anticipation but not yet touching.

  “Do you freely give yourself to me, Archie?” Nimble asked softly and seriously. This was the one thing he never tried to turn into a laugh.

  “Body and soul, I do,” Archie replied without even considering the words anymore. He used to wonder why he trusted Nimble so much more than other men; he’d never been able to decide if it was because Nimble didn’t bother to hide what he wanted, or if it was the result of Nimble’s hold over his soul.

  Nimble leaned in and kissed his mouth, sweetly, almost modestly, then straightened and gazed down at Archie’s naked body.

  “In return, all I am, any power I possess, I give to your service.” Nimble knelt and bestowed Archie’s stiff prick with a far less chaste kiss.

  Pleasure shot through Archie, and when Nimble took him deep in his mouth, he couldn’t help the low moan that escaped him. Nimble knew his way around, and he worked Archie to a bucking, arching, wild thing. Archie ran his fingers over the curls of Nimble’s hair and whispered his pleasure in inarticulate gasps. All of his being seemed to ride between Nimble’s lips and dance on his clever tongue. Ecstasy built and built, until at last it burst from Archie’s body and left him gasping and dazed.